American Valor Quarterly Issue 12 - Spring 2015 | Page 14

The first sergeant addressed him
and said,” Shames tells me he’s got to
report to the battalion commander at 8
o’ clock.”
”What the hell for?”
I spoke up and said, “Sir, I have no
idea. I do not question the battalion
commander, nor do I question you.”
”Okay, if you’ve got to be there at 8
o’ clock, get moving.”
”Yes, sir.”
So I reported to the battalion
commander and he said, “Shames you
are now a sergeant. This is your desk,
right inside my office. This is the S3’s

desk. He’s not here at the moment, but
he’ll be here shortly. He has already
been informed that you will be the
operations sergeant of the battalion.”

506th Infantry Association

Ten days later I was a staff sergeant,
a title I carried with me as we prepared
to land in England, and I thought I’d
died and gone to heaven.
Back over in England, we were given
operations that we guessed would
be similar to the invasion drop. The
mission was called Operation Eagle.
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There would be four divisional drops,
We didn’t have any idea we would drop
at Normandy, but the Bristol Channel
was laid out as a beach and we were
to drop near that channel to simulate
how we would support the beach
landing forces. We would also go to
our marshalling areas which we later
found out was at least partly meant to
throw off the Germans because every
time we had these huge operations the
Germans had no idea that it wasn’t
a real operation. We loaded up with
full field packs and ammunition,
mortars, machine guns, landmines,
even our mattress covers. We used
our mattress cover to place our body

AS GENERAL EISENHOWER
LOOKS ON, PRIME MINISTER
WINSTON CHURCHILL GREETS
MAJOR GENERAL DONALD F.
PRATT, ASSISTANT DIVISION
COMMANDER OF THE 101ST
AIRBORNE DURING TRAINING
EXERCISES IN BRITAIN, 1944.
PRATT WOULD BE KILLED ON
D-DAY, THE HIGHEST RANKING
ALLIED OFFICER KILLED IN THE
NORMANDY LANDINGS.

in if we happened to get killed. So
the Germans must have thought we
were serious. We held three of these
full field exercises. Prior to the fourth
exercise, Lt. Col. Wolverton, briefed
officers on the orders of Normandy.
We were told that under penalty of
death, we could not breathe a word of
this to anyone when we got back to
camp. We went into this room with
a huge map. It must have been two
stories high and a hundred feet wide
with markings to show where we were
and which units were present. It also
showed all five beaches, all the way
down to Utah Beach, our beach. There
were also illustrations showing which
units were supposed to be hitting the
beaches. It was a full briefing and it
scared the hell out of me knowing
what I knew, and having to sit on the
information until war orders were
passed on to the battalion commander.
Thankfully, it was no more than a
day later that I was ordered to get into
a jeep with Lt. Col. Wolverton, the
battalion commander, and a supply
officer. The rest of the troops were
to follow us to our marshalling areas
in the southern part of England.
During the briefings, I was told by
the Col. Wolverton that I was going
to be briefing the battalion, and about
an hour before we arrived at the
marshalling areas, Lt Col. Wolverton
handed me two envelopes and said,
“Shames, the engineers are preparing a
sand table [